The Dragon's Boy
by Elaine du Lac
Summary: "Arthur is not returning, young warlock, you are." Three centuries after Camlann, Merlin exchanges his humanity for a second chance at guiding a young prat into fulfilling his great destiny. This time he would have a decade's head-start. But foreknowledge is a double-edged sword. . . Timetravel, AU, Dragon!Merlin, Shapeshifting. Pre-Series.
1. Burning

**Prologue: Burning**

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><p>Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair not feast on thee;<p>

Not untwist- slack they may be- these last strands of man

In me, or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)

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><p>~ <em>Merlin. . . <em>

_T_he Great Dragon's feeble whisper drew him from the depths of slumber. The call sounded like the rasp of an old man on his deathbed. But the rush of foreign excitement that followed, as the dragon's mind touched his, was enough to snap him awake, wide-eyed and pulse beating fast.

~ _Kilgharrah_

He sought the faint presence of the dragon's mind and grasped it, tethering the gossamer thread of the dragon's magic to his own and suppressing the reflexive urge to ask 'what' and 'why' for the dragon's sake, knowing that the old creature could not answer without great difficulty.

_~ Save your strength. I will come to you._

He felt Kilgharrah's assent and the connection faded, leaving Merlin with a borrowed sense of anticipation that he could not fathom. It made him feel strangely alive for the first time in nearly three hundred years. _Arthur_, he thought, even as he tried not to hope too much or too soon. _Arthur is returning!_

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><p>~ <em>Arthur is not returning, young warlock. You are.<em>

The weight of the disappointment rendered Merlin speechless for a long moment before Kilgharrah's second sentence registered, and then he sighed at it and said with a long-suffering air, "Kilgharrah, those two words are supposed to have a simple meaning but with you-" he cut himself off and asked instead, "What does that even mean? _I'm_ returning?"

The golden eyes of the Great Dragon were covered in a thin, white film as he stared in Merlin's general direction and he did not move from his prone position on the bed of sharp, glittering rocks and mineral deposits. Too weak in body now to use his own voice, the dragon spoke to Merlin through their shared connection.

~ _The prophecies call Arthur the 'Once and Future King' not in reference to the land, but rather in reference to _you. _That part of the prophecy revolves around you, Merlin. Arthur may have been destined to be the greatest king this land has ever known but he is the Once and Future King only to you. _

Merlin stared at the greying face above him as tried to understand the explanation, but the dragon only blew out a warm breath and grew sad.

_~ You have lived like a ghost and a penitent since Arthur died three hundred and thirty three years ago, trying to atone for what you perceived to be your greatest failure: Arthur's death before he could achieve even a fraction of the greatness he was meant to achieve. And with him, the loss of the dream for a glorious and united Albion. _

Merlin's whole body stilled and his heart turned to stone in his chest as the dragon pulled at the stitches of old wounds that refused to heal. Time had only made it fester within him.

_~ Fate knew that you would fail the first time around. _

His head snapped up at that. "The first. . .?"

The dragon gave a mental nod.

_~ It was not your fault that Arthur died, Merlin. Your destiny had always been far too heavy for your young shoulders. It is not too heavy for you now. You have grown into your power and your wisdom has grown with it. You are ready to return to the past to fulfill your destiny once more, and this time, you shall see it truly fulfilled in all its glory, as it was prophesied. _

The dragon's mind spread itself around his, warm with something like affection and joy and pride.

_~ Your exile is over, Merlin. _

He tried to remember how to breathe even as his knees gave way under him and he half-fell, half-sprawled on the cold floor of the cave. He felt like a little child all of a sudden as he choked out through a voice thick with tears, "You promise?" He wasn't sure whether he was asking if he could truly go back to the past to see Arthur again or if he was asking for assurance that he won't fail this time. Perhaps it was both.

But Kilgharrah answered immediately with a resounding conviction and a steady throb of his great heart which Merlin felt in his own chest. _I promise._

There was only one question left in Merlin's mind now: "What must I do?"

~ _To erase and change what fate and human choice has written into the fabric of time itself, you must become more than yourself and I more than myself. It requires power and a nature beyond you alone or I alone, though we two are the most powerful magical beings left in this world.' _

The dragon sensed Merlin's exasperation and gave up his high speech in favour of the more direct but, to him, rather crude route:

_~ What _you _must do is choose to freely give up the little that is left of your human and mortal nature and accept the dragon blood that runs in your veins, which ran also in the veins of all the dragonlords who came before you. _

Merlin felt Kilgharrah smile, anticipating Merlin's question.

~ _Balinor can explain to you the lore of how dragonlords came to be. But for now, all you need to understand is that all the human dragonlords are descended from the single union of a dragon and a human maiden'. _

Merlin's ears burned red as he tried to imagine how that union could be possible. Thankfully, Kilgharrah's explanation was simple.

_~ The dragon was no ordinary dragon. He was the heir to the Dragonking, born with the power to command all the other dragons. As the Dragonking heir he had the power also to take any shape he wanted, including human form'._

"And once I accept the dragon blood and cast away my human side, what then?" Merlin asked, though he thought he already knew the answer. Even so, it was a difficult concept to wrap his mind around and he needed to hear Kilgharrah say it.

~ _You will become a dragon forever more. You will be my legacy; my offspring. _The dragon paused, and added gravely, ~ _You will be immortal. Such is the consequence of being both Emrys and true dragon. _

The dragon raised his great, scaled head and the muscles beneath his armoured limbs gathered themselves. When he spoke next, his words were heavy and warm with power.

_~ Do you accept these terms, for payment or for reward, as just dues for the chance to walk again the path of destiny long gone?_

The dragon crept forward with laboured breath.

_~ Do you, Merlin, of your own free will, choose to give up the blood and flesh bestowed upon you by your human mother and your human father, and accept mine in exchange?' _

Another heaving step and the dragon was upon him, clouded eyes flame-bright but unseeing, his unspoken words morphing into something more like dragon tongue.

_~ Will you become blood of my blood, spark of my fire, voice of my thunder-cry; a legacy unto me and all who came before me?_

This time Merlin responded without words and the dragon felt his answer strike and burn through both their hearts like a bolt of lightning setting a tall tree ablaze.

~ _And I, in turn, will offer you freely and willingly, my life, my magic, my blood, and all that I was or will be, _the dragon said, as with the last of his strength, he wrapped his scaled body around the warlock, spiked tail coiling about them both and wings snapping out to enclose Merlin in darkness for a brief moment.

Then white-hot flame engulfed them both, consuming them in a twisting inferno of magic and fire. Merlin would remember little of the experience forever after except for vague impressions of red-gold threads of power twining in a dance with what he knew to be his own lightning-blue, ozone-sparked magic; the two merging and separating and melting together again. Vaguely, he thought of how swords were forged and felt a faint protest at being made thus in a similar fashion, like a weapon at the hands of fate, but then he was the blue-white heart of the fire itself and he hissed and roared and thought no more.

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><p>Review! Tell me what you think! This is un-betaed. All proofreading and editing is done by me.<p>

The next chapter is being written. Nearly the entire half of the story is plotted out on my notebook, filling up nearly 50 pages of drafts and rough ideas; but after that. . . well. . . If you have some great ideas later on, after I've established the basic foundations of the story, then I'll be taking suggestions. For now, please hand out your encouragements. Here, here!


	2. Freezing

_**Notice to previous readers**: I've added a scene or two to the previous chapter. So it's a semi-update of sorts. There is new stuff to read! _

_After sitting back to watch how my story was received by the general public, I've decided that my Chapter One was too tame. So now I've tweaked my story to start "in media res," that is, in the middle of the story rather than chronologically. Thus, this story now starts a very tiny bit later in the plot and then flashes back to the beginning of the story and takes it from there. I hope you like it!_

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><p><strong>Chapter One: Freezing<strong>

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><p><em>Weep not for roads untraveled, weep not for paths left alone.<em>

_Cause beyond every bend is a long blinding end._

_It's the worst kind of pain I've known._

_- "Roads Untraveled" _

_- Linkin Park_

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><p>The boy's eyes were fierce.<p>

It was the look in those eyes that first drew Ector's attention to the boy. He was the smallest of the lot and no doubt the youngest. Although he was just as dirty as the rest, his flaxen hair, golden as ripe wheat, and his well-fed, healthy build made him stand out among the gaunt, half-starved looking children huddled together in a shivering mass at the center of the corral.

Ector, "the Flesh Lord", as he was often referred to in the underground network of semi-legal, semi-illegal trade that spanned the whole continent of the British Isles and beyond, leaned his fur covered forearms on the railing of the slave corral in interest. All the little boys in the corral were the newest acquisitions, carefully selected by his lieutenants for his company's trademark mercenary training. These boys were his gold; or would be, if they survived the training long enough to be sold to the highest bidder in Rome.

While trading in female-flesh and other miscellany was all well and good; it was truly his brilliant idea, all those years ago, of capturing young boys and moulding them into the perfect, obedient, mindless fighter that had earned Ector his reputation in the flesh trade, and his wealth. Of course, his associates had all thought him nuts when he told them about his idea and his few benefactors had refused him funding for it, but Ector had persisted. He had squeezed his resources to the last drop and worked hard at selling other slaves, all so he could feed, raise, and train his precious boys for years. And when they had grown. . . Oh! how they sold! They were worth a fortune each. Ector smiled at the memory of that first time he'd reaped the profits of his long, and difficult investment.

This boy, Ector assessed him from head to toe with an expert eye- a healthy body, a fighter's build, a fighter's spirit- he might just be worth a true fortune in gold. It would take delicate handling to tame the boy in just the right way without breaking his spirit. Years from now, that fighter's spirit, that same starved-lion look in those young eyes would make him a favourite in the gladiatorial pits of Rome.

Ector spun sharply on his heel and turned for his office tent, beckoning to his right hand man, Olek, with a curt hand gesture, not even bothering to look at the man. Olek followed him to the tent, three steps behind as usual.

The inside of the tent was warm, the coals in the tiny brazier at the center of the space glowing red with heat, the smell of damp leather permeating the primitive office Ector used for all his administrative work. Ector sat behind his rudely carved wooden desk, salvaged from a ruined inn somewhere nearby, on an equally rudely crafted seat piled cozily with ridiculously expensive winter-fur pelts, and fixed a sharp, falcon gaze on his first lieutenant.

"That golden-haired child. Where did you find him?"

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><p><em>Two weeks ago. .<em>.

Arthur gripped the reins and bent his small body toward the mare's neck, the speed of their passing flinging the horse's thick mane into his face. The seven-year old boy thrilled at the feel of the ground and the horse's iron-shod hooves meeting, the staccato vibrations of the gallop running up from the mount's sleek muscles and into his own as though it was he _and_ the mare who was sprinting across the frost covered road like a single creature.

His tears had long since dried from the wind and the exhilaration of his night ride, leaving a salty track down his cheeks. All his fiery resolve to run away from home and show everyone, especially his father, the King, that he was not useless, not careless (or lazy, or wild, or. . . or stupid) had cooled with his own dropping temperature and the sudden fall of the first snow of the year.

He guided his horse to a controlled canter and fought the urge to turn for home and the warmth of his chamber's fireplace. Someone would have found his painstakingly written letter by this time, recognized his seal, and brought it to his father when no sign of him could be found at this time of the night. He would be the laughingstock of the entire court if he returned now, so soon after declaring that he was leaving forever, and that he was giving up his right to the throne to whomever his father deemed suitable.

His father, his tutors, the noble boys fostered at court who were meant to be his entourage when they were grown, even the servants: they all considered him not good enough. His father showed his disappointment openly. His tutors frowned at him and shook their heads even as he struggled to decipher the letters on the parchment or force his hand to write legible script. The worst was when he had to read out loud in front of the other boys during group lessons. He always made a fool out of himself then and the boys would try to hold in their snickers because he was the prince, but his face would heat, and his stuttering reading would grow worse and worse at the humiliation. Then there were the whispers that followed him everywhere, always behind his back, drifting in the wind from huddled forms at the fringes of his vision, from hidden corners and behind pillars.

_The prince is a bit of an idiot, I hear. _

_Can't read at all and he's had tutors since he could walk and talk. _

_All he can do well is swing a sword and ride a horse. He'd make a good knight no doubt. But run a kingdom? God, help us!_

The training grounds were his only haven. Everyday he struggled through his letters, and his numbers. Learning history, politics and law was not as difficult as learning how to read and write. But listening to his tutors drone on about this or that made boredom and sleep a formidable enemy in the stifling lesson room. But when it was time for his martial training outdoors, Arthur felt like he was on top of the world.

It was tiring work, drilling with the sword, the shield, and various weaponry, but it was something he did better than all the other boys his age fostered at court, and even most of the older ones. '_He is a natural at combat'_, the weapons master would often say, voice filled with pride and wonder at his prodigious student. '_The prince seems to have been born in the saddle, sire'_, the riding master had reported to his father on another occasion, in a manner devoid of any superficial flattery.

Each of those times, Arthur would look towards his father, face glowing with the expectant praise, but Uther would merely nod at his son or at the master and say that it was '_as it should be for an heir to the throne'_ and then he would turn to Arthur and remind him that if he could only apply the same effort to his studies he would finally make an '_acceptable heir'_. Then Uther would leave it at that and Arthur would try not to be disappointed himself. He was always 'heir' to his father, and never 'my son, Arthur'. On rare occasions, he would be 'Prince Arthur, my heir," but that was as close as Arthur could get to a claim of personal kinship with the King.

Sometimes, Arthur felt that the whispers were right. He would make a great knight, but a bad prince, especially a crown prince. The kingdom would be better off if he left so that his father could pick an heir better suited to the job than he was; and Arthur could go off to find his fortune like one of those knight-errants in the tales his caretaker used to read to him at night.

They were always men of the sword and skilled at all forms of combat. They rode off in search of adventure and found glory and a name for themselves defeating foes and saving the innocent. Arthur knew now that most of those tales were a bit far-fetched and all of them were likely exaggerated, but surely, the basic idea was still sound, wasn't it? He could certainly imagine himself doing it- and succeeding too!

The thought had brewed and brewed in him for a long time until last night, when everything came to a head. Uther had lost his temper at him and shouted at Arthur about how he was '_disappointed at Arthur'_, and how '_his mother_ _had sacrificed her life in vain'_. The last barb struck Arthur like- like nothing he could ever describe and Arthur had then lost his temper as well and shouted right back, embarrassingly shrill in his childish anger at the injustice of it all and the pressure being placed on his shoulders. And then Uther had gone dangerously quiet and told him to '_leave, be gone' _from his sight.

Arthur had dashed off to his rooms at a dead run and the thought of leaving forever on an endless quest like one of those knight-errants suddenly seemed like the only option. It took him most of the evening to pen his short note to his father, telling him not to look for him and that he was off to be a warrior. _Someone else can be prince of Camelot, _he wrote. He had debated whether he ought to write a _goodbye_ or some other platitude to his father, but decided that he was too angry, too hurt at the moment, and it would take too much effort to write any more. He signed his name at the bottom- that part was easy- and placed his royal seal on the wax he'd dripped on the parchment.

But an hour into his midnight ride and the winter chill had seeped through his furs and his leather riding coat. His hands and feet were stiff and numb from the cold and his ears hurt. The excitement of his little adventure was leaving him slowly. Fear crept in as Arthur became aware of how deserted the road was. How the darkness of the woods at the edge of the moonlit road could hide all sorts of beasts. Was that the predatory glitter of watching eyes he saw? The prince started to tremble, just a little bit, even as he kept riding further away from the safety of his father's castle, pride the only thing preventing him from turning around and bolting for home.

Suddenly something shot from the bushes and darted across their path. Arthur barely had the time to glimpse brown fur, a long tail, and a tiny body before the spooked mare was rearing up and breaking into a frightened gallop. Arthur responded like he was taught by the riding master. He leaned into the saddle and gripped the mare's sides with his thighs, lifting himself off the seat just a bit so he didn't bounce around like a sack of potatoes, as the riding master liked to say.

He knew he should probably soothe her back to a steady trot before she tired herself out even more than she already had (because Arthur had kicked her into a run the moment he left the gates of the city) or lost a shoe nail in all the frantic running she'd been doing and ended up lame, but Arthur was enjoying himself a little too much.

And then it happened. One second Arthur was leaning into the wind, flying through the path like, well, something fast, and the next, the mare was buckling into a crumpled heap and Arthur was truly flying- in the air. Then he hit the snow-covered ground with a thud and a yelp and his vision went dark.

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><p>When Arthur awoke, he didn't know that he was freezing, although he would later remember that he was, or at least he must have been. He was blanketed in newly fallen snow. All around him the ground and the trees glowed white in the darkness. The mare was gone. He was alone in the middle of the road. Vaguely he recognized that he was now facing in the direction of Camelot instead of away. If he walked straight along his line of sight, he thought, he just might reach the citadel by early afternoon or dusk, assuming that it was now around two candle-marks just after the midnight hour.<p>

He was such a fool to think he could have made it on his own, riding around the land in search of adventure and glorious deeds like a knight-errant! The mortification of realizing his own folly and the promise of further embarrassment later, when he returned home, nearly made Arthur burst into tears again, but he scrunched his nose up and pursed his lips and willed the tears away. He could have at least waited until spring, he thought to himself, or summer to carry out his quest, if he really had to.

With the resolve to face the consequences of his actions, no matter how woefully stupid it was, Arthur tried to stand. His first attempt to get his arms and legs under him, to find purchase on the ground so he could push himself upright, alerted him that something was very, very wrong. He couldn't get his limbs to move. His attempt resulted only in a feeble sweep of his arms and legs on the snow. He felt boneless and floppy. As if he was still half-asleep in the warmth of his bed and his languid body refused to wake up to face the day. But he was cold not warm, and he _wanted_ with all his will to get up and walk home but his body refused.

Arthur became truly frightened after his third attempt to stand resulted in his vision going hazy and his panicked breathing slowing into a false calm. And then everything was slowing down and he was sliding into a frigid half-sleep even as he wished with all his might for _home_ and _father_ and even _Gaius. _

This was the turning point in the wheel of fate where, in another life, in another world perhaps, Arthur would remain prone on the snow-covered road and a search patrol from Camelot would find him there soon after.

A frantic Uther, riding at the head of the company of knights, would take one look at the half-frozen form of his little boy lying on the ground, pale as death and utterly still, and feel such a terrible grief and remorse that he would be ready to promise his entire kingdom and his own life if only he could have his son back, alive and vibrant and golden, like a wild little lion cub who could not be tamed to follow the conventions of a highly cultured society.

A knight would check the prince for signs of life and find a weak pulse. Then Uther would rush to his son's side, drop to his knees, and scoop his son up into his arms, burying his face in that golden hair, and finally weep his gratitude and relief. It would be a moment the King would never forget. It would be the moment that would shatter Uther's iron-fisted resolve to raise a strong heir and hide all the softness of affection from his already tender-hearted little boy.

Thirteen years later, a peasant from Ealdor would arrive in Camelot and save the Prince's life from a vengeful sorceress' dagger and be rewarded with a '_position in the royal household' _as Arthur's manservant. Then the rest, as they say, would have been history; a history that had already been spun to it's tragic ending for one exiled child of fate but had barely begun for another lying helpless in the snow.

But this is not that life, and this is not that world. A new element had entered into the story that would spin the thread of history in a different direction and ultimately weave a different tapestry. Uther would not find Arthur lying in the road that night, no matter how frantically he searched. Later, much, much later, he would go home in defeat and crippling despair, a father without a son; because in that second when Arthur was about to drop into a frozen sleep, something that felt like _home _and _safe_ called out to him. It's very presence was warm and soothing. It seemed to know him, and in his dreamlike state of mind, Arthur reached out to it, he didn't know how for he knew couldn't move his body at all. But he reached out nonetheless and if his body moved in that time, he was not aware of it.

The presence met his after what seemed like both an eternity and no time at all. He felt it's touch like a friend enveloping him in an embrace that protected and warmed him all over. _Arthur, Arthur_, it seemed to say with a strange rhythm like the _thump, thump_ of a heartbeat. It was then, to the sound of that thumping beat, that Arthur finally succumbed to sleep, with a sigh and a last snuggling squirm; sleeping the true sleep of little children safe in their beds.

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><p>Olek had found the boy in Camelot; asleep in the hollow of an enormous oak tree just as dawn had started to lighten the sky. He was curled around the largest egg he had ever seen. It was blue as indigo ink from merchants across the sea. Olek knew as soon as he saw it. <em>It could only have been a dragon egg, sir.<em>

The last dragon egg known to men.

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><p><strong>Feb 03 edit<strong>: Updates will be this weekend, around Feb 7-9! The next chapter is mostly written out. I just need to finish it and polish it up before the weekend. Please leave some REVIEWS before you go. A word or sentence is sufficient if you are lazy and don't know what to say. Tell me you liked it if you did. Tell me you didn't if you didn't, though please explain a bit as to why. They are what feeds me.


	3. Dawning

**Previously. . .**

Olek had found the boy in Camelot; asleep in the hollow of an enormous oak tree just as dawn had started to lighten the sky. He was curled around the largest egg he had ever seen. It was blue as indigo ink from merchants across the sea. Olek knew as soon as he saw it. _It could only have been a dragon egg, sir._

The last dragon egg known to men.

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

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><p><em>He hung in the twilight between the world of waking and the world of sleep. He dreamt. With the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, he dreamt of things half-remembered and things forgotten. Then he dreamt of things that were- in the cold, vast world outside the protection of his shell. They were not things he knew before, though they were similar. When these dreams came, they hurt him with a cold, aching sorrow, though he knew not why. Not at first.<em>

_He saw a woman singing to herself, alone in a hut, her cheeks sunken from hunger. She rocked back and forth on the floor, while the fire burned low in the hearth, the wood almost gone. There was no pile beside it, waiting to be fed to the fire. Soon she would be left without heat; but the woman did not glance at the empty space where a pile of kindling should be. She seemed oblivious to anything but her own empty song._

_He knew the woman. He knew the hut. But the dream felt wrong, wrong, wrong._

_Her song was meant for him; meant to put him to sleep at night, to soothe the ache of hunger, to ward off the trembling cold on unforgiving winter nights. Suddenly he knew what was so wrong in the dream. He was not there when he should have been. She sang to no one when, in his memories, she ought to have been singing to him; celebrating the end of the long famine together. She was mourning for him!_

_Aching, he tried to reach out to her; to comfort her with the warmth of his fire but she was beyond his reach. The hearth had gone dark, the fire burned out, the ashes cold. He could do nothing for her even as he curled his tiny wings tighter around himself and heard his heart beat, and beat, and beat while the woman wept._

_His mother._

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><p>A long, tense silence followed his words. Olek didn't dare breathe. He sneaked a glance from under his lashes at the frail looking flesh lord. He was reclining almost languidly on his fur-cushioned seat, his face unreadable. Alarm bells started to ring in Olek's head at the sight. When the flesh lord started acting like a cat basking in sun, limbs loose and lazy, eyes half-lidded, and expression slack with disinterest, terrible things always followed. It meant he was truly angry.<p>

Olek could not blame him. A dragon egg was worth an army of trained slave brats. It was worth more than a king's ransom most likely. Lords and king's would be vying to outbid each other for it. Ector could have named any price he wanted for the last dragon egg in the British Isles, perhaps even in the known world. So Olek had expected this reaction the moment he let the egg go, but it didn't stop the fear from rising up in his throat, sour and bitter as bile.

"How did you lose the dragon egg, Olek?" The flesh lord asked almost gently, as though speaking to a crying child. The dark hairs on the back of Olek's neck and on his arms began to rise.

"It all began with the boy himself, sir. He- he seems to have some kind of special connection to the egg. Being near it made him. . ." Olek fumbled for the right word for a bit, finally settling with "unmanageable, sir."

Ector raised a brow at his lieutenant's choice of words. For Olek, his most capable, most dependable man to say that anything was unmanageable. . . He rolled the thought around in his mind and tried to imagine a scenario where the boy had Olek completely stumped. He failed.

"Explain in detail. From the beginning." _This little boy is becoming more and more interesting._

The flesh lord was back to his usual sharp demeanor and Olek secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps he would survive this after all. Olek knew the lord would see that he had made the right decision to let the egg go as long as the lord gave him a chance to explain properly. After all, no one could anticipate the flesh lord's mind for business better than Olek. He had learned everything he knew at his master's knee, or his feet rather- he was more favored dog than favored son and he didn't mind at all.

And so with a lighter heart, he told the story from the beginning.

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><p><em>Two weeks ago. . .<em>

Arthur woke sideways in mid-air, trapped in between muscled arms and a leather-clad waist. He kicked at air futilely and tried to shriek out his outrage at the treatment (how dare they lay hands on me!) but there was a filthy-tasting cloth stuffed in his mouth and he only mortified himself by sounding like a furious cat. The arms did not budge or loosen. He was being carried like- like a pile of dirty laundry!

He threw his gaze around wildly and tried to make sense of what was happening. He was in the forest. The smell of rotting things, pine, and dampness from half-melted snow was sharp in his nostrils. Crisp leaves and tiny twigs crunched with every heavy step the man took.

Peering over the man's shoulder, Arthur saw that they were walking away from a gigantic tree. The gnarled roots rose and twisted out of the ground all around its base, as tall as the boy himself and nearly as thick as his torso. The tree had a hollow in the middle of it's trunk. The entrance was large and yawned like the dark mouth of a cave. Another man, tall, dark-skinned, and lean, dressed in the same leather vest as the one who carried him, was half-crawling out of the entrance, something blue and round cradled carefully in his arms. It looked like a strange, large, robin's egg to Arthur.

But the curious egg was soon forgotten when a terrible sight caught his eye. A cage on wheels filled with bound children around his age. His eyes darted to the side, his heart in his throat. Men with swords walking around the cart, guarding it, watching it. The terror in the eyes of the other children as they huddled in a pitiful heap behind wooden bars. _Slavers!_

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><p>"The moment the boy caught sight of the transport cage, he went wild, " Olek recounted in an even voice.<p>

"He struggled in Reid's arms, kicking and wriggling like a fish. It was nothing to Reid. But then the boy got an arm free and grabbed at Reid's crotch and _twisted_! The man made this strangest sound- sort of strangled like- and then the boy was on the ground and he was running off with Reid's sword."

"The men were after him immediately, swords drawn." Olek paused and thought of how to describe what happened next. "Our men are the best, m'lord, but the boy gave them a magnificent fight! Reid's broadsword should have been too heavy for the little lad but he heaved it about well enough, though he tired himself out fighting with it. He is clearly well-trained and very talented, sir. I am sure that he is a nobleman's son, most likely an unwanted bastard child who had run away from home- but not before he'd learned the warrior's arts, likely as a way to prove his worth."

"Well, he fought our men off desperately for ten minutes, sir; making up for what he lacks in size, skill, and strength with ferocity and desperation. But when we had him on the ground, bloody and bruised, something happened. It's difficult to understand, let alone explain but . . . " Olek trailed off and tried once more to gather the threads of his tale into coherency.

"Well, there I was, holding the dragon egg, watching the boy fight like a possessed child. But when Reid had him on the ground, fighting for air, face bloody from a cut on his forehead, the boy gave the men this look, like a mad cornered animal. He let out this terrible cry, and then. . ."

Ector leaned his forearms on his knees and watched Olek waving his hands about in the air, carried away in his tale; all his previous fear forgotten. If it had been anyone but his little dark-skinned hound of a right hand man, Ector would believe the tale to be greatly embellished.

"Then it was like a signal was given! Suddenly the egg in my hands was burning hot! I dropped it in my surprise. But it did not break, sir! Not at all! Although I was terrified for a second that it might, but it did not. I am terribly sorry, my lord. It might have broken and. . . and I deserve to die, please!"

"Just continue, Olek." The flesh lord gave him an irritated look, a blank expression on his pale face.

"Yes, m'lord." Olek drew a deep breath and straightened his spine. The lord despised people who lost their composure.

* * *

><p><em>Two weeks ago. . .<em>

Arthur felt the man ease up his hold on his back and the side of his head a moment before he registered the cry of surprise coming from somewhere behind him. It was a moment of opportunity. He could almost hear his combat master's voice screaming at him to move. Throw the man off. Take advantage of his distraction. Now, Arthur! He bucked his whole body, not backwards, but sideways, putting the man leaning his weight on top of Arthur incredibly off balance. From there, it was easy for Arthur to gather up all his lithe young muscles to roll and leap away, out of the circle of men and steel, out of immediate reach.

But when he tried to run he only managed a weak stumble; his leg muscles seizing up in a cramp. He fell groaning to the floor. The men laughed at him and remained where they were.

"Ready to come quietly, little boy?" one of the men said.

Arthur was hardly listening. He had fallen on something round and hard. It had smacked all the air out of him when it hit him in the gut even though he had managed to throw his hands out to absorb his fall. He groaned and was glad that it hadn't been his ribs that had fallen on the object. He was certain it would have cracked or broken. Arthur knew what broken bones felt like. The healing process had driven him mad with boredom and the constant pain had made him a snarling little demon prince for months.

He looked down at the object and found a smooth, blue egg.

A shout in front of him had him raising his head to see the dark-skinned man he had glimpsed holding the egg a while ago leap agilely over a tree root, and walk towards Arthur. Something in his movements had Arthur on edge. The man seemed on edge himself. He looked ready to pounce if Arthur tried to even move a muscle. The men behind him had fallen silent.

Arthur watched the man approach. He didn't know what to do next. He couldn't run, he couldn't fight. A tide of despair washed over him. He saw his life unroll before him, a bleak and endless road filled with nothing but gray misery; a cold, hollow existence. He could only guess what cruelties slaves had to endure, so he couldn't say he knew what awaited him. But he knew what he wouldn't find, wouldn't see ever again if they took him: home.

As soon as he thought that word and felt the longing for it deep in his bones, a surge of strength washed over him, searing his blood like fire. He leapt to his feet and turned, moving so that he had both the approaching man and the group of men behind him in his sights.

From the corner of his eye, he saw that the dark-skinned man had frozen in his tracks. His eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. The circle of men to his right were backing away from him, their swords raised and trembling in their grip.

He looked down at himself and saw that his skin glowed faintly like he'd been lit from within. The early morning sun was shining on him from behind, warming him down to his bones. A thought, fleeting and transient, crossed his mind, attributing this sudden warmth and strength to his mother, watching over him from the otherworld.

And then he saw the dark shadow of wings unfurling on the ground in front of him, seamlessly melting from out of his own shadow so that it seemed as though the wings, featherless, and ridged with spikes at the junctures, were his. They rose like a dark omen from out of his long shadow's back.

* * *

><p><em>Preview of Chapter Three:<em>

Balinor had always been a forgiving man and a pacifist. He believed always in seeing the best in people. And he was always the first to run headlong into risk and danger with no security but his faith in his friends, and in the inherent goodness of men's hearts.

But the moment the rune-covered iron manacles had clamped shut on Kilgharrah's leg, that awful moment of Uther's betrayal, the believing heart within Balinor had torn to pieces and in it's place rose something black and ugly, oozing_ bitterness_ into him every day of his lonely exile, for years and years until he brimmed and overflowed with it.


End file.
